The ESP Timeline (one of the site's most popular features) has been
completely updated to allow the user to select (using the timeline controls
above each column) different topics for
the left and right sides of the display.

The number of male and female slaves imported to the North American British colonies balances out for the first time.

1730

Otto Müller is among the first to see bacteria since Leeuwenhoek and the first to classify them into types.

The Spanish reverse a 1730 decision and declare that slaves fleeing to Florida from Carolina will not be sold or returned.

1731

Jethro Tull's Horse-hoeing husbandry advocates the use of manure, pulverization of the soil, growing crops in rows, and hoeing to remove weeds.

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer publishes Sacred Physics, a pictorial account of Earth's history based on the Old Testament. Included is a description of what he believes is a fossilized victim of the biblical flood.

Slaves aboard the ship of New Hampshire Captain John Major kill both captain and crew, seizing the vessel and its cargo.

1732

The Reverend George Berkeley establishes the Berkeley Scholarships for graduate study at Yale, the first such scholarships in America.

Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" first issued.

Nöel-Antoine Pluche publishes the first of eight volumes of Le spectacle de la nature (Spectacle of nature), popularizing "natural theology" in France.

Quaker Elihu Coleman's A Testimony against That Anti-Christian Practice of Maling Slaves of Men is published.

1733

Stephen Hales'Statical essays, containing haemastatics, etc., two volumes, reports his investigations on blood flow and pressure in animals and the hydrostatics of sap in plants.

(no entry for this year)

1734

The Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg proposes a hierarchical universe, still generally based on a Newtonian static universe, but with matter clustered on ever larger scales of hierarchy, endlessly being recycled. This idea of a hierarchical universe and the nebular hypothesis were developed further (independently) by Thomas Wright (1750) and Immanuel Kant (1775).

René de Réamure's Mémaoires pour servir à l'histoire des insects (History of insects) is one of the foundation works in entomology.

Georgia petitions Britain for the legalization of slavery.

Louis XV, King of France, declares that when an enslaved woman gives birth to the child of a free man, neither mother nor child can be sold. Further, after a certain time, mother and child will be freed.

Under an English law Georgia prohibits the importation and use of black slaves.

1735

Systema Naturae (System of Nature) by Carolus Linnaeus introduces the system of classification for organisms that is still in use today.

(no entry for this year)

1736

(no entry for this year)

An indentured black servant petitions a Massachusetts court and wins his freedom after the death of his master.

1737

Hermann Boerhaave prints Jan Swammerdam's Biblia naturae (Bible of nature), which was originally published to little notice in 1658. It contains his reports on the dissection of insects under a microscope.

Linnaeus's Genera Plantorum (Genera of Plants) explains his method of systematic botany and classifies 18,000 species of plants.

Georgia's trustees permit the importation of black slaves.

Spanish Florida promises freedom and land to runaway slaves.

1738

(no entry for this year)

Slaves in Stono, South Carolina rebel, sacking and burning an armory and killing whites. Some 75 slaves in South Carolina steal weapons and flee toward freedom in Florida (then under Spanish rule). Crushed by the South Carolina militia, the revolt results in the deaths of 40 blacks and 20 whiteThe colonial militia puts an end to the rebellion before slaves are able to reach freedom in Florida.

1739

Native Americans traveling with French soldiers find mastodon fossils along the Ohio River. The bones will be shipped back to France and become the first American fossils studied by scientists.

In the early 1990's,
Robert Robbins
was a faculty member at Johns
Hopkins, where he directed the informatics core of GDB
— the human gene-mapping database of the international human
genome project. To share papers with colleagues around the world, he
set up a small paper-sharing section on his personal web page. This
small project evolved into The Electronic Scholarly
Publishing Project.

ESP Support

In 1995, Robbins became the VP/IT of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle, WA. Soon after arriving in Seattle, Robbins secured
funding, through the ELSI component of the US Human Genome Project, to
create the original ESP.ORG web site, with the formal goal of
providing free, world-wide access to the literature of classical genetics.

ESP Rationale

Although the methods of molecular biology can seem almost
magical to the uninitiated, the original
techniques of classical genetics are readily appreciated by one and
all: cross individuals that differ in some inherited trait, collect
all of the progeny, score their attributes, and propose mechanisms
to explain the patterns of inheritance observed.

ESP Goal

In reading the early works of classical genetics, one is drawn, almost
inexorably, into ever more complex models, until molecular explanations
begin to seem both necessary and natural. At that point, the tools
for understanding genome research are at hand. Assisting readers reach
this point was the original goal of The Electronic Scholarly Publishing
Project.

ESP Usage

Usage of the site grew rapidly and has remained high. Faculty began
to use the site for their assigned readings. Other on-line
publishers, ranging from The New York Times to Nature
referenced ESP materials in their own publications. Nobel laureates
(e.g., Joshua Lederberg) regularly used the
site and even wrote to suggest changes and improvements.

ESP Content

When the site began, no journals
were making their early content available in
digital format. As a result, ESP was obliged to digitize classic
literature before it could be made available. For many important
papers — such as
Mendel's original paper
or the
first genetic map
— ESP had to produce entirely new typeset versions of the works,
if they were to be available in a high-quality format.

ESP Help

Early support from the DOE component of the Human Genome Project was
critically important for getting the ESP project on a firm foundation.
Since that funding ended (nearly 20 years ago), the project has been
operated as a purely volunteer effort.
Anyone wishing to assist in these efforts should send an
email to Robbins.